Synopsis
SHORTLISTED FOR THE FIRST EVER BOOKER PRIZE
'A MASTERPIECE. . . DEMANDS TO BE READ' - DOUGLAS STUART, AUTHOR OF SHUGGIE BAIN
'AN EXTRAORDINARY NOVEL' - MICHAEL MAGEE, AUTHOR OF CLOSE TO HOME
It’s the west of Scotland in the 1950s. New houses are going up. Factories are opening.
But Dunky Logan, a 15-year-old brought up in a tenement flat in working-class Kilcaddie, is ditching school to be a labourer on a local farm. Dead set on becoming a hard case, he wants to work shoulder to shoulder with so-called real men.
Irish Catholic Mary O’Donnell arrives at the farmhouse as the new maid. She is pregnant - no boyfriend in sight. But she’s smart, and she has a plan to get herself up in the world.
As Dunky is swallowed up by a vicious cycle of violence, betrayal, and booze, Mary becomes entangled in a savage family feud.
Now there’s no going back, not for either of them.
'One of the finest British novels of its era. A landmark in postwar fiction. A brave and brilliant book' - Liam McIlvanney, author of The Quaker
'A devastating study of 1950s Scottish adolescence . . . a genuine lost classic just waiting to be rediscovered by a new generation of readers' - DJ Taylor, author of Orwell: The New Life
With an introduction by James Robertson
Details
29 May 2025
9781035073580Reviews
An elegy to ordinary lives. A forgotten classic entirely deserving of a place in the canon of great social realism novels of the twentieth century. A raw, unsparing tale of coming of age, of masculinity in crisis, of farm workers holding on as post-war Britain encroaches upon them . . . A masterpiece of time and place that looks you square in the eye and demands to be readDouglas Stuart, Booker Prize winning author of Shuggie Bain
From Scenes Like These is an extraordinary novel, full of rage and despair, but joy too, and moments of profound beautyMichael Magee, author of Close to Home
A devastating study of 1950s Scottish adolescence by one of the most consummate stylists of the whole post-war era. From Scenes Like These is a genuine lost classic just waiting to be rediscovered by a new generation of readersDJ Taylor, author of Orwell: The New Life
'What impresses most is its harsh authenticity . . . Williams gets across the pains and perplexities of adolescent desire, guilt and aspiration convincingly and without literary frills'New Statesman